Victorious
by Brachylagus-fandom
Summary: There are no victors, only survivors
1. Tradition

The victors had a tradition. The day after their newest member was announced, Haymitch would buy three bottles of vodka. They would gather in a room without cameras and microphones, and talk in soft voices.

They would talk about the twenty-three, but not of the victor. The tributes, but not the games. The Victors would talk and talk and cry and talk some more until the cold names weren't names anymore, but living, breathing people who had lived tragically short lives. Then, they would drink each and every one of them away.

In those not-quite funerals, the first talk of rebellion sprang up. The revolution was planned in a small storage room in the Capitol.

After the war, someone found the room, and pasted tiny headshots of every dead tribute on the walls, complete with their name and district. It was the memorial of the victors.

In truth, there are more memorials, trapped inside pages of notebooks that were carried and protected and hidden away.


	2. Name Your Demons

Haymitch has a small black notebook in his pocket every day. The only thing in it is names, starting in his clean, sixteen-year-old print and slowly degrading into its current illegible scrawl. First, penned in blue ink, is a list of forty-seven.

 _Velvetine, 17, who almost won, hit by her own axe  
Emerald, 12, who will never have her heart broken, stung by butterflies  
Diamond, 18, who should have looked behind him, shot with a dart  
Sheen, 17, who thought the water was safe, poisoned  
Felicia, 13, who was too young to fight, suffocated  
Laura, 14, who was never crowned, stabbed  
Honorius, 17, who lived and died in rock, drowned in lava  
Caesar, 18, who was the strongest, eaten by squirrels  
Copper, 12, who limped, strangled  
Wiress, 15, who was the smartest of us all, stabbed in the back  
Voltaire, 16, who never made it to the woods, stabbed in the eye  
Amper, 17, who had never seen fresh food, poisoned  
Mary, 13, who looked so beautiful in that blue dress, snapped neck  
Annabeth, 17, who had been bitten by a shark, fell off the mountain  
Caspian, 18, who had a cruel mind, burned in lava  
Finn, 15, who could swim for hours, burned in lava  
Electra, 13, who had bright eyes and a frail body, fell and didn't rise  
Hydra, 14, who sang beautifully, beaten with a mace  
Sol, 12, who never heard a cannon, choked  
Watt, 15, who lost his sister and girlfriend, suicide  
Titania, 16, who blew kisses in the chariot parade, sleeping bag flooded in lava  
Aurelia, 14, who tried to protect Balbus, stabbed  
Balbus, 16, who couldn't protect himself, stabbed  
Cassian, 18, who laughed at my outfit, stabbed  
Maple, 15, who slept in trees, burned to death in a tree  
Willow, 17, who was amazingly flexible, beaten  
Blight, 12, who could barely pick up a sword, caved in skull  
John, 14, who could climb to heaven, bled to death  
Satin, 14, who had red hair, slashed throat  
Coco, 15, who had lost her sister in last year's games, burned alive  
Lowell, 13, who never really lived, died quick  
Lawrence, 16, who was Lowell's brother, stabbed  
Jane, 13, who loved flowers, poisoned  
Plenti, 14, who could hold her breath the longest, smothered in eruption  
Chaff, 16, who never kissed a girl, died in lava  
Cornie, 15, who was a fighter, killed by Careers  
Joann, 15, who ran fast, burned to death in lava  
Bovi, 13, who loved nothing more than cattle, shot through the heart  
Dalton, 17, who knew every cut of beef known to man, pushed into volcano  
Burke, 18, who could remember anything he heard, strangled  
Prim, 13, who was a delicate flower, crushed ribcage  
Apple, 12, who was barely old enough to be reaped, drowned in poison  
Thresh, 16, who had nothing to live for, an arrow to the heart  
Harvest, 17, who knew what berries were safe, starvation  
Aster, 13, who was my sister in all but blood, snapped neck  
Maysilee, 15, who saved me, speared by a pink bird  
Ash, 18, who almost made it, infected burns_

 _All killed by the Capitol as punishment for people who are long dead._

He can add so much more; even now, he can remember the tiniest of details about some of them. He can remember that the Careers had tortured most of their kills, Caspian in particular. He can remember the uneasy whispers about what had happened to Cornie, the one death that he had not seen. He can remember Velvetine in her death throes and in the purple dress at the interviews. He can clearly see Lawrence sobbing over Lowell. He can see Capsian holding tiny Apple in the pond, laughing as she struggled and Thresh tried to save her; he can see Apple's brilliant smile covering panic interview night.

That's why he starts drinking, to take the edge off of the arena. The habit worsens with the next set of four.

 _Daisy Abernathy, my mother  
Marcus Abernathy, my father  
Jonathan Abernathy, my baby brother  
Margaret Pinewood, my girlfriend_

 _All killed by the Capitol to punish me._

The drinking gets worse with every pair of names he has to add. In the end, he adds forty-six more. Forty-six more children he can't save.

Before the Seventy-Fourth Reaping, he was expecting to add two more.

After the reaping, he expected _Katniss Everdeen_ and _Peeta Mellark_ to be written in his notebook as he rode the train back home alone.

Neither dies, but Haymitch realized that those names were going to end up on another list, the _Killed by the Capitol because they were too smart for their own good_ list.

After writing the list down for twenty-three years, Haymitch knows full well who the enemy is.

More names go down in the next two years than in all the years since he wrote down the first set, ending finally with _Alma Coin and Corionalus Snow, killed by the pawn they once controlled._

Directly before that comes _Primrose Everdeen, who was a mockingbird in a word needing an angry mockingjay, killed by double-exploding bombs._

Haymitch keeps record for a reason.; the names were once people. Good people, bad people, smart people, strong people, dead people. Lots of dead people. Lots of dead children.

He censors his demons by knowing their names. When you name your demons, they lose power. Haymitch knows about power.


	3. Peeta's Story

"Daddy!" Willow cried, rushing towards him. "Tell me a story!"

"Sure, sweetheart," He replies, thinking of the best way to tell it. "There was once a man with a voice so beautiful, when he sang, all the birds fell silent. He married a girl with hair the color of gold and they had two amazing daughters. Then, the man died, and his family was left alone.

"The elder girl, who had the man's sooty black hair, took it upon herself to keep her little family alive. She did what she could to keep her sister, her little Primrose, alive. And, for five years, it worked.

"Then Primrose turned twelve, and everything went wrong. There was a man, a very evil man, and he controlled the country where Primrose's family lived. He picked her to fight other children. Primrose's older sister volunteered to take her place, knowing full well that she would most likely die. Primrose only said one thing to her sister as she disappeared.

"'You have to win.'

"And she did. Two months later, she returned, richer, stronger, and no longer innocent. But the evil man was not finished. He took Primrose's sister away again, and burned her home. Primrose, her mother, and everyone else they knew had to leave for a place thought long destroyed. Primrose's sister did return, and desperately tried to fix the mess she had made.

"And she did, with fire and blood. She overthrew the evil man and saved what was left of a broken world. But, in the war, she lost many of her friends and her beloved Primrose. Primrose's sister was left alone to try and fix her broken heart.

"And she did, and eventually had her own happy ending."


	4. Victorious

_When you become a Victor, there's no going back._

The men and women sitting nervously around the table knew that all too well. Midnight had long since passed, and Cashmere was still missing. The adults knew what had happened. They had known what would happen when the tall, pretty blond had been crowned victor. They had known when she had locked herself in her room. But they also knew she should have been back. She had been missing for almost eight hours. Even Finnick was back. All of the assembled victors were worried.

The door creaked open and Cashmere stepped in. All her plans for quietly going back to her room and pretending the incident had never happened flew out the window when she noticed the gathering in the living room. Shine, Finnick, Blight, Annie, Mags, Seeder, and a few others she didn't know all were staring at her. Cashmere forced herself not to cry. Shine, her mentor, stood up, looking her up and down. Cashmere felt herself blush.

She knew what Shine saw. The beautiful silver dress she had worn to the party in tatters. The broken heel. The smeared makeup. The bruises that had not quite formed yet on her face. Shine sighed. Cashmere waited for her mentor to explode. Shine had a serious temper. Instead, Shine walked over to Cashmere and guided her back to her room.

"Shower," the older, stronger woman commanded. "We'll talk when you're done." With that, Shine walked out, leaving Cashmere alone to clean herself up.

Fifteen minutes later, Cashmere walked out into the living room, having traded the tattered dress for some modest pajamas. Cashmere took a seat at the edge of a couch, looking around the circle nervously. Finnick slipped a blanket around her shoulders. Seeder passed her a mug of hot chocolate.

"They said they would kill Gloss," Cashmere said. "He's my baby brother. He's going to volunteer, I know it. I can't let him die." The adults merely stared at her. "What? Don't look at me like I'm… I'm…" Cashmere broke into tears.

"Cashmere," Shine started, barely controlled, "we know what you had to do. We know what Snow makes his victors do. Why do you think Finnick acts like that?" Cashmere looked, wide-eyed, at Finnick. He nodded, ashamed.

"We're here for you," Mags garbled.

"Why?" Cashmere began to sob. "Why me? Why this? Why can't I just go home and forget all this?"

"That's not the way the Games work."


End file.
